Although academic studies of EID communication on social media are on the rise, they still suffer from a lack of theorization and a need for more methodologic rigor.

The public's lack of understanding and the public's misconceptions about autism in China contribute to the underdiagnosis and undertreatment of the disorder and the stigma associated with it. Mass media are the primary channel through which people learn about autism. This article examines how leading newspapers in China covered autism in the 10-year period of 2003 through 2012 through a framing analysis. It finds that while autism has received increased media attention, it is increasingly framed as a family problem-family members are cited or quoted more than any other sources and the responsibility of dealing with autism is ultimately assigned to families. Autistic people are largely silenced unless they are autistic savants with special talents. The use of the scientific discourse and the human-interest discourse both decrease over time in percentage, while the use of other discourses such as the public relations discourse becomes more dominant.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a discourse constructed through the constant dialogue and negotiation between corporations and their different stakeholders. This article examines how leading corporations in the United States and China discuss the rationales, themes, and practices of CSR on their corporate websites through a quantitative content analysis. The results, based on data collected in 2008, indicate that leading U.S. companies demonstrate a higher level of comprehensiveness and standardization in their CSR communication, while Chinese companies in different industries take distinctive approaches to CSR. However, the differences between the CSR discourses of leading Chinese and U.S. companies have greatly diminished since 2008. Updated data collected in 2012 show that the Chinese companies have adopted an all-inclusive and homogeneous approach in CSR communication, which is very similar to the approach taken by their U.S. counterparts. Such convergence is attributed to the process of institutionalization, especially to the forces of coercive and mimetic isomorphism.

Autism is a highly stigmatized developmental disability in many societies, and the media are major contributors to such stigma. Presented here is the first systematic analysis of Chinese newspapers' coverage of autism for stigma-causing content. More specifically, this analysis examines the age of autistic people reported, the image of autistic people, and the use of stigma cues (in terms of peril, mark, and shame) and challenge cues (in terms of personification, hope, and fight) in five leading newspapers in China between 2003 and 2012. It finds that while the reportage of autism increases over time, which might contribute to the public's heightened awareness of the condition, such reportage is often biased. The most common stereotypes about autism in Chinese newspapers are autistic people as children, as patients, or as savants. The most often-used challenge cues are personification and hope, but their uses significantly decrease in percentage from 2003 to 2012. The most often used stigma cues are peril and mark. The use of the shame cue is relatively less frequent, but it increases significantly over the 10-year period. Theoretically, this article provides an application of stigma communication theory in a non-Western context. Practically, it not only contributes to the current knowledge about media representation of autism in China, but also suggests that it is important for media agencies and health care professionals to promote media guidelines and train health journalists for reporting disability issues in a nonstigmatizing way.

This study proposed and tested a method for assessing the frames used in social media discussions about EIDs based on the creation, interpretation, and quantification of semantic networks. Public health agencies could use social media outlets, such as Twitter, to assess how the public makes sense of an EID outbreak and to create adaptive messages in communicating with the public during different stages of the crisis.